The electronic industry is increasingly using surface mount technology for securing high pin count, small dimension integrated circuit (IC) devices to circuit boards. It has proven difficult to test such devices with existing electrical test probes due to the close spacing of the IC leads. To overcome this problem, test clip adapters have been designated, which fit down on the IC device and provide electrical signal paths to an associated test head assembly. The test head assembly has spaced apart test points formed it int, which allows easy probing of the IC device. One example of such a test clip adapter is described in U.S. Pat. application Ser. No. 07/530,141, filed may 24, 1990, to Paul A cole et. al., entitled "An Adapter And Test Fixture For An Integrated Circuit Device Package" and assigned to the assignee of the present invention.
The test clip adapter described in Cole has an injection-molded housing generally conforming to the size of the IC for which it is designed. The housing has a top and orthogonally depending sidewalls forming a cavity into which the IC fits. The sidewalls have inner and outer surfaces with vertical grooves formed in the outer surface near the top. Further down the sidewalls the grooves extend through the sidewalls forming a comb structure of ribs and slots. Electrically conductive elements fit into the grooves and are secured in the sidewalls by coverplates. The electrically conductive elements have contact lead segments that extend into the housing cavity for engaging the leads of the IC. The electrically conductive elements extend above the top of the housing and form contact lead pads for engaging corresponding contact pads on a test head, which is secured to the adapter.
One drawback to this type of design is that separate molding dies have to be produced for each of the numerous IC package configurations. These configurations may be square or rectangular in shape and have lead counts from 44 to 232 or higher. Additionally, the lead pitch or spacing between leads may vary between IC's. Currently, the must widely used lead spacings are 0.65 mm, 0.8 mm, 1 mm, and 0.025 inches.
What is needed is an adapter for surface mounted integrated circuit devices that can be used with IC devices of varying configurations and lead pitch spacing without the expense of producing individual molding dies for each adapter.